


lord, i want to remember how to feel like i did

by tendertragedies



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Behavior, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, are they ooc? the showrunners dont know either, we were robbed of alice and eliot interations anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 17:06:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19430356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tendertragedies/pseuds/tendertragedies
Summary: so, he's killed the love of his life, and all his friends hate him because he can’t keep it in his pants, and he’s essentially being prostituted out in exchange for a knife.got to love destiny, huh.





	lord, i want to remember how to feel like i did

He’s absentmindedly turning that silver flask of his over and over in his hands when she approaches him, draped across this conveniently placed bench like a sad, lonely, french girl. There’s something almost relaxing in being perpetually attractive; at the very least, he’ll have that for a little while longer. It’s reassuring to know that someone will want him for something, no matter how much he fucks up.

No one has bothered looking for him since he stomped off a few minutes prior, or at least he assumes no one has as no one’s found him, and he’s not exactly hiding. Just sitting in fucking Fillory of all places, looking at trees. And lets just say, trees in Fillory don’t actually look that different from trees on Earth. How... disappointing, to say the least. If he’s going to be stuck here for the rest of his life - however long that might be - it should at least have magical, talking trees or something. Something vastly different than Earth, not something that looks like it crawled straight out of a postcard from the Pacific Northwest.. Been there, done that, you know?

He barely feels her presence at first, too caught up in the feeling of being alone to notice the first moment when he isn’t. Or maybe he does, and just doesn’t care enough to consciously process it. He hasn’t been caring about things the right way these past few weeks. It makes sense, in its own way, that he would just start simply blocking things out entirely. If only they were the things he actually wanted to block out, like the way not-quite-Mike’s hands at felt against his hips, his breath against his bare skin…

Luckily there were drugs for that though. Lots and lots of drugs.

Alas, when Alice leaves the safety of the tree line and starts moving towards him, Eliot has no choice but to accept the fact that he is due for a conversation, one most likely of the difficult variety.

Her steps are quiet and small, much like her, or at least, how she tries to be, but he doesn’t need to hear her arrive to know she’s getting closer. There’s this unmistakable power to her, this intensity and focus that can’t be packaged into something meeker, no matter how hard she may try. But it’s admirable how hard she tries, really. Eliot himself knows all too well the level of effort it takes to redesign yourself as literally anything else; he can’t exactly fault her for still bleeding through the holes in her armor. For a while, he did too, until he sealed up all of those pesky little cracks. But he must not have done it right because he feels like everything he’s ever been, everything he’s ever tried to turn himself into, is somehow seeping through and into the air, evaporating upon contact.

“Eliot,” she says, rather curtly in his opinion. Not that it really matters. After all, what’s a little curtness from a familiar face surrounded by strangers in a fictional land? The only familiar face to search for him as well. But it’s  _ fine _ , it’s  _ great _ , it’s  _ dandy _ . Margo and him don’t do emotions, and Quentin is too kind, too awkward to be bearable right about now anyways. He doesn’t want them to look for him, as if there was actually something even remotely wrong. Because there’s not. There never is. Obviously.

“Alice,” he responds, neglecting to look up and acknowledge her more than that. He’s not even sure that Margo would have been worth an upwards glance, let alone Alice Quinn, who, frankly, was mainly someone to him through little Q. 

Well, that wasn’t quite fair. Alice wasn’t someone because of Quentin. If anything, it was almost the other way around. (Or at least it had been, until that had exploded in literally everyone’s faces - not that he was entirely blameless for the boom-). But Alice, Alice was interesting enough in her own, wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing kind of way. She was almost like Margo, if Margo had wanted everyone to think she was actually Quentin, but without any of his endearing earnesty whatsoever. 

“What, no curtsy for your king?” He teases. Is he allowed to tease her anymore? Or did he - quite literally - fuck that up? He scrapes near-perfectly maintained nails over metal grooves, barely feeling the small tug on his nails. So grooming wasn’t at the top of his list the last couple of days. So what. It was barely noticeable after all. Just another crack in his hard, glossy armor. Just another slight failure. Whatever. Whatever.

She huffs.

“So you’re the High King of Fillory. That’s… something, I suppose.” She says the word something as if it were a synonym for surprising, or batshit fucking insane. He hums in agreement.

“Damn right it is! It’s a dream come true. A lit-er-al fairytale. Who didn’t pretend they were some long lost prince growing up, huh? Who could ask for more? A whole goddamn kingdom.” She worries her bottom lip between her teeth, and tucks a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. He still not actually looking at her, mind you, but he likes to pretend that he can somewhat predict her nervous ticks after these past few months. He can practically feel her eyes analysing him, can nearly hear her brain working, attempting to explain him away like he was just another spell to puzzle through.

“You don’t want to be a king. You want to feel at peace. You want to be happy.”

Oh. Oh. That garners a reaction, Eliot’s nimble fingers ceasing their movements as he gracefully unfurls in her direction and delicately raises an eyebrow. He wasn’t expecting something as astute as that.

“Oh? Don’t you know my dear, dear Alice; those are one in the same! Love and attention, royalty and happiness, drug use and mental stability. They’re all just synonyms for one another. They don’t actually mean a goddamn thing.” He makes a sound that is somehow a cross between an unhinged giggle and a violent scoff, and, transforming it into a bitter smirk, adds, “And besides, I took a blood test. And apparently there’s no such thing as a false-fucking-positive in good ol’Fillory! This is just my…” He smacks his lips. “Destiny.” 

He spits the word out as if it were poison. Destiny. The word leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Eliot Waugh was never much for destiny. Destiny was just a fancy way of justifying all of the horrible shit in the world. Of absolving people from the responsibility of their own actions.”Oh it wasn’t your fault,” destiny says, even though it undoubtedly was.”That’s just how things were  _ meant _ to be.”

Destiny was just another excuse for his shit-hole of a childhood under the watchful eye of a homophobic father on some godforsaken farm in the middle of godless Indiana. Oh, he wasn’t shit because he was a shit person, he was shit because he was meant to be. Oh,  _ shut up _ .

Destiny told him that Logan wasn’t his fault; after all, he had to discover his magic somehow, didn’t he? But Logan was still dead, and he still killed him, and even though he was a bully of the worst degree, he was also just kid too, and what business does destiny have deciding that his life was meant for Eliot’s own self-discovery?

Destiny ignored all the work he put into creating himself. The hours of practicing a casual air of nonchalance, the days spent replacing that farm boy vocabulary with something that screamed “sophisticated.” Destiny says that hard work is fucking useless, that he would have become what he is today with or without all the effort. Destiny says “why fucking bother?” Why fucking bother indeed.

Destiny was cosmic justification for his pain, a way of saying that some higher being marked him for inescapable tragedy. 

(Destiny was just another way of saying that if Eliot hadn’t been so important, Mike would still be alive, that Eliot wouldn’t have had to- Well. The hero always slays the dragon, after all. And, apparently, neither of them ever had a choice in the matter. How’s that for the accuracy of fairytales?)

But Eliot doesn’t feel important, even with royal blood supposedly running through his veins. He doesn’t feel like some destined king of a mythical land, like the protagonist of one of those fantasy novels that Quentin adores. He just feels tired, and angry, like he can’t decide between slitting his wrists and throwing a punch.

He takes a swig from his flask.

“ _ Fuck _ destiny.”

He isn’t aware that he’s spoken this bit aloud, not until Alice hums her agreement. Cautiously, she takes a seat next to him on the bench, tucking her skirt under her as she goes like some prim and proper little lady. She’s always as cautious as a bomb, but twice as pretty, El muses. Wordlessly, he passes her the flask.

She takes a swig as well.

She wipes her mouth clean as she passes it back to him, their fingers sliding across one another for a brief moment before quickly separating once again. Both of their hands are cold, but they find no warmth in the slight touch. She’s no Q, or hell, even Margo, no matter what slight similarities he tries to find. She’s just Alice. 

And Alice Quinn doesn’t do casual intimacy. Or maybe he’s just projecting again.

She purses her lips, eyes flickering in that unstoppable, Mona-Lisa-way that they always seem to do. “Destiny is bullshit, Eliot. People have free will, and they make their own decisions, and then they, and everyone around them, have to live with the consequences. There’s no one higher power making any of us do anything.” The look on her face is damn near unreadable. Had she always been this unreadable? Or had Eliot been kidding himself into believing, for a brief moment, at least, that they were friend-adjacent, that they even knew each other at all?

Well, they’re nowhere near friends now. El had made damn sure of that. He clears his throat.

“Alice... I’m… I am sorry, you know. It wasn’t… it wasn’t on purpose or anything like that.” He’s picking his words carefully, more carefully than he has in a while, more carefully than he does with most other people, because goddamn it, he  **does** feel guilty about what happened, and frankly, that’s a bit new to him. The Great, Untouchable Eliot Waugh, Party-Savant and Sexiest-Man-On-Campus, doesn’t feel guilty about blowing up relationships. 

Except, now he does apparently. And apparently, he sincerely apologizes now as well. My my, how times had changed.

“I know this doesn’t fix anything at all, and you have every reason to hate me, and if you slapped me right now I honestly wouldn’t blame you, but I honestly didn’t mean for any of that mess to happen, and I feel awful about it, and I know that Q would never have done anything like that if we hadn’t all been higher than Mary-fucking-Poppins on those fucking emotion bottles...”

The words barely settle in the space between them before she sighs again, far harsher than before. “Don’t apologize for him. That’s his job.” She turns her head to face him now, all that intensity focused on him at once. It’s a lot to handle, she’s always been a lot to handle, but he knows damn well that he deserves this right now.

Her eyes stop flickering as she stares him down. He doesn’t break eye contact, even though he wants to. He owes her this, at least. He owes her his ears. Well, actually, he owes her a hell of a lot more, but he has to start somewhere, right? This might as well be some small penance for inadvertently breaking her heart. 

Her mouth is a thin red line. He’s always on someone’s thin line these days, dancing between their unwavering adoration and utter loathing. He’s starting to hate this role he’s carved out for himself, starting to hate the oscillating extremes his life bounces between.

“And you’re right, Eliot. That doesn’t change what happened. You still slept with my boyfriend, whether you meant to or not. Whether you feel bad about it or not.” He nods along to her words, eyes downcast. And maybe it’s just his imagination, but she almost looks like she softens, just a tiny bit. He hopes she isn’t. She shouldn’t keep having to make herself smaller, softer. And he shouldn’t keep getting away with hurting the people he’s supposed to call his friends.

She tucks a piece of hair that had come loose during her small speech back behind her ear and fiddles her hands in her lap. Emotional discussions aren’t really where either one of them excel. Another similarity to Margo. Is he keeping a list? He feels like he’s keeping a list. Always comparing her to someone else. Well, he never claimed to be anything but a judgemental bitch.

He passes the flash back to her again, and she takes a long swing, like she’s attempting to find out whether the spell meant for infinite alcohol is actually infinite or not.

Silence fills the air between them, and it’s thick enough to choke him. But it feels less like punishment, and a lot more like penance. And god knows he has a hell of a lot to be forgiven for.

She finally breaks the fragile silence, looking away over to the familiar-unfamiliar forest. “You know what the worst part is? It’s not that he slept with someone else. It’s that he slept with  _ you _ . God, you and Q were like my only friends, and what you did destroyed that, no matter what your intentions were. That’s what so fucking… awful about this. You two made me lose my only friends.” 

And what the fuck is he supposed to say to that? What the hell can he even think to say that would fix any of this? Nothing. He’s fucked her over seven ways to Sunday, and he can’t fix a damn thing.

So instead he says nothing at all, and lets another silence fall over them like a fog. For a brief second he considers passing the flask back to her, and letting her drown her sorrows the same way he’s been trying to drown his, but it feels cheap and empty. “Sorry I blew your boyfriend, and blew up the only good things you had in life. Drink?” What good would that do, huh? And the silence just stretches on.

Its been forever and a day when she stands up, wiping her hands against her skirt as she does. “All the same, thank you for doing this, I suppose. Staying here, so that we can get that knife. I can’t imagine that this is easy for you.”

Eliot smirks at that. Funny how after everything she´s still finding it in her to be just the tiniest bit kind. It really shows the nuance of the human condition, how one can hold both disdain and sympathy for someone all at once. 

She frowns, and he must still be reading her wrong, because he doesn’t deserve, doesn’t need any concern from her. So he killed the love of his life, and all his friends hate him because he can’t keep it in his pants, and he’s essentially being prostituted out in exchange for a knife. So what. It really  _ is  _ whatever. Really.

Really.

And for some reason he can’t quite figure out, she reaches her hand out to help him up. And for some reason he can’t quite name, he takes it, and let’s her pull him up.

And if he doesn’t immediately drop it, and she doesn’t make him, well. Who’s to say why.

**Author's Note:**

> the title's from east by sleeping at last  
> tumblr: @anthotnyjcrowley


End file.
